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Martian Sand Dunes Caught in Motion. InShare0 A rippled dune front in Herschel Crater moved about 1 meter between March 3, 2007 and Dec. 1, 2010.

A dune in the northern polar region of Mars shows significant changes between two images taken on June 25, 2008 and May 21, 2010.
Colossal Storm Rages Over Saturn’s Surface. The largest storm seen on Saturn in more than 21 years has now been encircling the planet for a record-breaking 200 days.First appearing as a tiny blemish on Dec. 5, 2010, the storm is still going strong today, surpassing the ringed giant's previous longest tempest, which lasted 150 days back in 1903.

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, in orbit around Saturn, has given astronomers a front-seat view of this enormous maelstrom and provided valuable data.From its humble beginnings, the storm has grown to engulf the entire area between Saturn’s 30th and 51st north latitudes. From north to south, the tempest stretches about 9,000 miles — greater than diameter of the Earth — and covers two billion square miles, or eight times the surface area of our planet.Above:Northern ShowerThe storm marches through the planet's atmosphere in the top right of this false-color mosaic from Cassini.
Incredible New View of Eagle Nebula's 'Pillars of Creation'

The European Space Agency’s Herschel space telescope has captured this gorgeous new view of the famed Eagle Nebula.

The Eagle Nebula, located 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Serpens, is visible as a fuzzy red spot to backyard astronomers with a modest telescope. In 1995, NASA’s Hubble space telescope captured a famous image of one region within the Eagle Nebula: a star-forming cluster named NGC6611, known as the “Pillars of Creation.” Light and heat from young stars carved out the iconic pillars, which are each several trillion miles long. Herschel’s image isn’t just beautiful, it also updates the Hubble photo and reveals new details about the region.
Titan: A Wet World Not Far From Earth. Astronomers weekly announce the discovery of new exoplanets, some similar in size or temperature to our planet –- but Earth-like worlds are not always far away.Though Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is a small, cold world orbiting on the outskirts of the solar system, it actually boasts many familiar features.

“Titan is fascinating because it has some surprising properties so similar to Earth,” said planetary scientist Oded Aharonson from the California Institute of Technology. “It has a liquid which erodes channels, an atmosphere, a hydrologic cycle, and many other parallels.”Chief among Titan’s interesting qualities is that it's the only body other than Earth where liquids are known to flow in large concentrations on the surface. Because average temperatures there are -300 degrees Fahrenheit, these liquids are not water. While this image is fanciful, astronomers may get a chance to capture even more spectacular views if the Titan Mare Explorer (pdf) is selected to fly to Saturn.

The perfect combination of faded light, outdated coloring, and nostalgia seems to make them more beautiful with age.Perhaps that’s why this collection of images from NASA’s Gemini Program is so great. The Project Gemini Online Digital Archive, released this weekend by NASA and Arizona State University, features high-resolution digital scans from the original Gemini flight films.As NASA’s second human spaceflight program, which had 10 manned flights between 1965 and 1966, Gemini saw such milestones as the first American spacewalk, first week-long spaceflight, and the first docking maneuver with another vehicle in space.
A Starfish in the Sky. In the constellation of Aquila (the Eagle), lies a star nearing the end of its life that is surrounded by a starfish-shaped cloud of gas and dust. A striking image of this object, known as IRAS 19024+0044 has been captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Protoplanetary nebulae offer glimpses of how stars similar to the Sun end their lives and how they make the transition to white dwarfs surrounded by planetary nebulae.

As it ages, a Sun-like star eventually sheds its outer layers into space, creating a beautiful and often intricately shaped cloud of gas and dust around it. At first, still relatively cool, the star is unable to ionise this gas, which shines only by reflected and scattered stellar light. Only when the temperature of the star increases enough to ionise this protoplanetary nebula does the pattern of gas and dust become a fully fledged planetary nebula. Links Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA and R.
Sunset Glow in Orion. The magnificent reflection nebula NGC 2023 lies nearly 1500 light-years from Earth.

It is located within the constellation of Orion (The Hunter), in a prestigious area of the sky close to the well-known Flame and Horsehead Nebulae. The entire structure of NGC 2023 is vast, at four light-years across.
Looking to the Heavens. The pearly wisps surrounding the central star IRAS 10082-5647 in this Hubble image certainly draw the eye towards the heavens.

The divine-looking cloud is a reflection nebula, made up of gas and dust glowing softly by the reflected light of nearby stars, in this case a young Herbig Ae/Be star. The star, like others of this type, is still a relative youngster, only a few million years old. It has not yet reached the so-called main sequence phase, where it will spend around 80% of its life creating energy by burning hydrogen in its core.
Preview of a Forthcoming Supernova. At the turn of the 19th century, the binary star system Eta Carinae was faint and undistinguished.

In the first decades of the century, it became brighter and brighter, until, by April 1843, it was the second brightest star in the sky, outshone only by Sirius (which is almost a thousand times closer to Earth). In the years that followed, it gradually dimmed again and by the 20th century was totally invisible to the naked eye. The star has continued to vary in brightness ever since, and while it is once again visible to the naked eye on a dark night, it has never again come close to its peak of 1843.
Hubble Revisits an Old Friend. Supernova SN 1987A, one of the brightest stellar explosions since the invention of the telescope more than 400 years ago, is no stranger to the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

The observatory has been on the frontline of studies into this brilliant dying star since its launch in 1990, three years after the supernova exploded on 23 February 1987. This image of Hubble’s old friend, retreived from the telescope’s data archive, may be the best ever of this object, and reminds us of the many mysteries still surrounding it. Dominating this picture are two glowing loops of stellar material and a very bright ring surrounding the dying star at the centre of the frame.

Infinity Imagined. Infinity Imagined. Infinity Imagined. Infinity Imagined. Infinity Imagined. Infinity Imagined. Infinity Imagined. Infinity Imagined. Geomagnetic Storm Strength Increases. Geomagnetic Storm Strength Increases › View larger An aurora on March 8, 2012 shimmering over snow-covered mountains in Faskrudsfjordur, Iceland. Image courtesy of Jónína Óskarsdóttir Geomagnetic storms due to coronal mass ejections (CMEs) earlier in the week have increased in strength, and are now rated a G3 on a scale from G1 to G5.
Infinity Imagined. Hubble Heritage Gallery of Images. Northern Lights Go South: Geomagnetic Storm Lights U.S. Skies with Auroral Display: Scientific American Slideshows. Email Phil Dubois snapped this photo outside Fort Kent, Maine, near the Canadian border. "The northern lights are not usually visible here," Dubois says. "We usually only see them maybe once a year if we are lucky, and nothing as intense as the show last night.

"....[ More ] Phil Dubois snapped this photo outside Fort Kent, Maine, near the Canadian border. "The northern lights are not usually visible here," Dubois says. .
[ Less ] [ Link to this slide ] Phil Dubois/Flickr via Creative Commons license. A Fuller Moon: High-Res Images Fill in Details about Lunar Topography: Scientific American Gallery. A moon-orbiting spacecraft has compiled a nearly complete map of the lunar surface at its highest resolution to date. The moon is our closest celestial neighbor, but our knowledge of its topography is still fuzzy.

That's changing quickly, thanks to the camera on board NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which is being used to locate potential landing sites and lunar resources.
Hubble Zooms in on Double Nucleus in Andromeda Galaxy (01/11/2012) - Introduction. Tierra del Fuego. Don Pettit, March, 15 2012 Tierra del Fuego, the land of fire, was what Magellan named the tip of South America in 1520. He had seen the fires set by local inhabitants who did not want the Portuguese explorer to set foot on their land.

UDF SkyWalker V1.0. Pale Blue Dot « a simple prop. Image of the Day - Gallery. A Tale of Three Galaxies. The Giant Nebula, NGC 3603. Last View. McCandless Orbits in Jetpack. Soyuz on the Launch Pad. Saturn's Northern Storm. Expedition 29 Crew Lands. Montage. Earth Observations. Long Way From Home. A Cosmic Exclamation Point. VV 340, also known as Arp 302, provides a textbook example of colliding galaxies seen in the early stages of their interaction.

Chandra X-ray Observatory - NASA's flagship X-ray telescope. 21 Unbelievable Photographs of Mars. NASA's latest stunning images of sun (photos)
Its mission is science, but since NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) was launched in 2010, it's been sending some just-plain stunning images of the sun back to Earth.
The first science artist to draw accurate pictures of Mars and the Moon. Astronomers share galactic glories.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / CfA. 'Pillars of Creation' reloaded. Image Catalog. Top 24 Deep Space Pictures of 2011. The immensity of Saturn. The Planet Artists: Chesley Bonestell, Lucien Rudaux, and Ludek Pesek. Just about everyone doing the kind of space art I do (sometimes referred to as “rock and ball” space art), owes something to Chesley Bonestell. While not the first artist to specialize in astronomical art, he raised to the level of fine art. A classically trained painter, Bonestell began his career as an architect and architectural renderer.

Top 16 Pictures from Space 2011. INSANELY cool picture of Comet Lovejoy. A dying star with the wind in its hair. Stunning view of a bloom from space. IMAGE Spacecraft Pictures Aurora. Northwestern Europe at Night. Amazing Astronomy Illustrations From the 1800s Resurface Online. Amazing Astronomy: Victorian-Era Illustrations of the Heavens.